April 11, 2016
By Paul Joseph, Paragon Communications News Director –
The statewide candidate filing period begins at 8 am this Wednesday morning for state and county offices in the state of Oklahoma.
Filing will be from 8 am to 5 pm on Wednesday, Thursday and ending at 5 pm on Friday night.
Candidates for the state offices will file with the Secretary of the State Election Board in Oklahoma City while candidates for county offices file with the individual secretaries of the county where they reside.
A number of positions are open in each county and they are all the same.
For the counties of Beckham, Custer, Roger Mills and Washita, the county offices of county clerk, court clerk, sheriff and district two commissioner are all up for reelection.
The area city offices, however, do not file at this time. Those positions are dictated by their own city ordinances; however, some will be coming open this year, others next year.
The filing period for the Clinton and Weatherford municipal races is June 6-8.
Clinton residents will be choosing a new mayor to succeed Seth Adams who has announced he’ll not be running again. They’ll also be selecting City Council members from Wards 2 and 4, although not necessarily new ones. The two sitting council members may file for reelection in June and may run unopposed. Adams now lives outside the city limits of Clinton and is not eligible to run again.
Weatherford residents will also be voting for City Council representatives for Wards 2 and 4.
Mayor Mike Brown’s seat isn’t up for reelection until 2018.
Arapaho, Cheyenne, Cordell, Custer City, Elk City, Erick, Sayre and Thomas will not have municipal elections in 2016. The first time any council seats in those communities become available is in 2017.
Also coming up later this year is the U.S. Senate seat held by James Lankford because he’s completing the term of Tom Coburn who resigned prior to his term expiring.
This is the year U.S. Representative Frank Lucas must file for reelection and may pick up a challenger if he seeks another term.
In the state legislature, the seats of Representatives Todd Russ of Cordell, Mike Sanders of Kingfisher and Harold Wright of Weatherford will be up for election.
Oklahoma State Senator Darcy Jech’s term doesn’t expire until 2018.
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